George Chesterfield

“ We cannot believe the statesman to have been only superficial and worthless who anticipated in his Irish policy the convictions of Burke and the ideas of Fox.
[Sidenote: 1733—Chesterfield's governing ability]
The time, however, of Chesterfield's Irish administration is yet to come. At present he is still only a rising man; but every one admits his eloquence and his capacity. It was he who moved in the House of Lords the "address of condolence, congratulation, and thanks" for the speech from the throne on the accession of George the Second. ”

“ Teacher and preacher he assuredly is, and long will be, yet no thanks are his due from a posterity of the common people whom he so sublimely despised. His pious mission was not to raise the level of the multitude, but to lift a single individual upon a pedestal so high that his lowly origin should not betray itself. That individual was his, Lord Chesterfield's, illegitimate son, whose inferior blood should be given the true blue hue by concentrating upon him all the externals of aristocratic education. ”

“ It is not easy to form a secure opinion as to the real character of Chesterfield. If one is to believe the accounts of some of the contemporaries who came closest to him and ought to have known him best, Chesterfield had scarcely one great or good quality of heart. ”

“ Chesterfield embodied in rare completeness the characteristics of a shrewd man of the world of one who had 'been behind the scenes both of pleasure and business.' He avowed no rule of conduct outside the urbane conventions of polite society. ”

“ The name of Chesterfield has become a synonym for good breeding and politeness. It is associated in our minds with all that is graceful in manner and cold in heart, attractive in appearance and unamiable in reality. The image it calls up is that of a man rather below the middle height, in a court suit and blue riband, with regular features wearing an habitual expression of gentleman-like ease. [Pg 65] His address is insinuating, his bow perfect, his compliments rival those of Le Grand Monarque in delicacy; laughter is too demonstrative for him, but the smile of courtesy is ever on his lips ”

“ A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and exclaiming, "G—— d——! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a café, nor wonder "what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." ”

“ Chesterfield, whose theme is manners and social amenity, deliberately seeks a form of expression appropriate to his text—the perfection of tact, neatness, good order and savoir faire. After his grandfather, the marquess of Halifax, Lord Chesterfield, the synonym in the vulgar world for a heartless exquisite, is in reality the first fine gentleman and epicurean in the best sense in English polite literature. ”

“ And knowledge about Lord Chesterfield is always welcome. Few of the famous figures of the last century have been more misunderstood than he. The world is too ready to remember Johnson's biting letter; too ready to remember the cruel caricatures of Lord Hervey. Even the famous letters have been taken too much at Johnson's estimate, and Johnson's estimate was one-sided and unfair. A man would not learn the highest life from the Chesterfield letters; they have little in common with the ethics of an A Kempis, a Jean Paul Richter, or a John Stuart Mill. ”

“ Lord John Russell, in the Bedford Correspondence, which he edited, charges this nobleman with conducting the French nobility to the guillotine and to emigration. But Lord Chesterfield died on the 24th March, 1773, sixteen years before 1789, and nineteen years before 1792. To any man of reading and research—to any man of a decent acquaintance with literature, it is unnecessary now to vindicate the character of the Earl of Chesterfield. ”

“ I do not recollect ever seeing a landscape change so suddenly in England.
Chesterfield is an intelligent looking town, evidently growing in population and prosperity. It has its own unique speciality; almost as strikingly distinctive as that of Strasburg or Pisa. This is the most ambiguous and mysterious church spire in the world. It would be very difficult to convey any idea of it by any description from an unaided pen; and there is nothing extant that would avail as an illustration. The church is very old and large, and stands upon a commanding eminence. ”

“ He argued that the real business of life was the subordination of natural instincts to those external refinements of manner which were recognised as good breeding in the capitals of civilised Europe, and especially in the Parisian salons. But the practice of his philosophy did not demand the repression of all individual tastes, as his confessed dislike of music, the opera, and fashionable field-sports abundantly proves. Chesterfield's worldliness was in point of fact tempered by native common-sense, by genuine parental affections, and by keen appreciation of, and capacity for, literature. ”

“ Even in the eighteenth century it was sometimes distinguished to act with the minority, and Chesterfield adopted the now favourite modern pose of championing the weak. He railed at the Government, wrote pamphlets against it, hired men of letters to aid him, and quickly became the leader of that ever-present body of men and women who are dissatisfied, and yet know not what they want. He patronized Johnson and Pope and many others, the majority completely forgotten, and chiefly with their help and his own ready tongue attained the distinction of being the most sought-after man in London society. ”

“ I would take a wager she might have a man killed for her every day, find she would only hold her head the higher for it: one would suppose she imported from Rome plenary indulgences for her conduct: there are three or four gentlemen who wear an ounce of her hair made into bracelets, and no person finds any fault; and yet shall such a cross-grained fool as Chesterfield be permitted to exercise an act of tyranny, altogether unknown in this country, upon the prettiest woman in England, and all for a mere trifle: but I am his humble servant; his precautions will avail him nothing ”

“ Chesterfield was a literary and philosophical dandy, who, richly furnished with the small coin of wisdom, and fearing nothing so much as indecorum, would have been a great teacher if the earth had been a drawing-room. ”

“ But Lord Chesterfield, although his vanity was flattered at the idea of having a book dedicated to him, was too delicate a fine gentleman to wish to have anything to do with a man he considered poor. "He throws anywhere but down his throat," he said, "whatever he means to drink, and mangles what he means to carve. ”

“ Neither when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or as Under-secretary of State, did he allow a gaming-table in his house. On the [214] very night that he resigned office he went to White's.
The Hague was then a charming residence: among others who, from political motives, were living there, were John Duke of Marlborough and Queen Sarah, both of whom paid Chesterfield marked attention. Naturally industrious, with a ready insight into character—a perfect master in that art which bids us keep one's thoughts close, and our countenances open, Chesterfield was admirably fitted for diplomacy. ”

“ The earl's own antiquarian studies are numerous,—a memoir of Sir James Steuart Denham, an Account of the Parish of Uphall, an Account of the Abbey of Dryburgh in Grose's Antiquities, and sketches of George Heriot, Lord Mar the son of the Regent, and Drummond of Hawthornden. He kept up a lengthy correspondence on antiquarian matters with Nichols, and sent him Some Remarks on the Progress of the Roman Arms in Scotland during the Sixth Campaign of Africanus, which were published in vol. xxxv. of the Topographia Britannica. Sometimes the poor man was sadly duped. ”

“ Johnson also hurled this missile at Lord Chesterfield, calling him “A lord among wits, and a wit among lords.” The earl had offended the rugged lexicographer, whose barbarous manners in company Chesterfield holds up, in his Letters to his son, as things to be avoided.
Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.—Pope: Rape of the Lock. ”

“ In such situations, reading by snatches, and by intervals of precarious leisure, people form the habit of seeking and unduly valuing condensations of the meaning, where in reality the truth suffers by this short-hand exhibition, or else they demand too vivid illustrations of the meaning. Lord Chesterfield himself, so brilliant a man by nature, already therefore making a morbid estimate of brilliancy, and so hurried throughout his life as a public man, read under this double coercion for craving instantaneous effects. ”

“ Extracts and abridgments of Chesterfield's works, chiefly of the 'Letters' to his son, were numerous from the first. They often bore fanciful titles, such as 'The Principles of Politeness,' 1775 (often reprinted about 1830 as 'The New Chesterfield') ; 'The Fine Gentleman's Etiquette' (1776) ; 'Some Advices on Men and Manners' (1776) ”

“ The Earl of Chesterfield spoke with connoissance de fait, when he treated of the theme; and his lordship, whose complacency on this occasion, does not permit him to see that his wit is pointed against himself, tells a story without the slightest recollection of the pithy saying of the old bard, “De te fabula narratur.”
“A man of honor,” says Lord Chesterfield, “is one who peremptorily affirms himself to be so, and who will cut anybody’s throat that questions it, even upon the best grounds. ”

“ The world is an immense folio, which demands a great deal of time and attention to be read and understood as it ought to be; you have not yet read above four or five pages of it; and you will have but barely time to dip now and then in other less important books.
Lord Albemarle has, I know, wrote {It is a pleasure for an ordinary mortal to find Lord Chesterfield in gramatical error—and he did it again in the last sentence of this paragraph—but this was 1751? D.W.} to a friend of his here, that you do not frequent him so much as he expected and desired ”

“ The ruddy youth, who washed his face at the cistern every morning, and swore and looked eternal love and constancy, was now metamorphosed into a flippant, palid, polite beau, who devotes the morning to his toilet, reads a few pages of Chesterfield's letters, and then minces out, to put the infamous principles in practice upon every woman he meets. ”

“ Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and mouth mostly shut. When new or stale gossip is brought to you, never let on that you know it already, nor that it really interests you. The reading of these Letters is better than hearing the average comedy, in which the wit of a single sentence of Chesterfield suffices to carry an act. His man-of-the-world philosophy is as old as the Proverbs of Solomon, but will always be fresh and true, and enjoyable at any age, thanks to his pithy expression, his unfailing common sense, his sparkling wit and charming humor. ”

“ Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the [Pg 203] reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. ”

“ Although he entered Parliament before he had attained the [212] legal age, and was expected to make a great figure in that assembly, Lord Chesterfield preferred the reputation of a wit and a beau to any other distinction. 'Call it vanity, if you will,' he wrote in after-life to his son, 'and possibly it was so; but my great object was to make every man and every woman love me. ”

“ It will be remembered that the earl sent his son abroad at the age of fourteen to study for five years on the Continent, and to acquire a better preparation for life than Oxford or Cambridge could offer. Of these universities Chesterfield had a low opinion. He could not sufficiently scorn an education which did not prevent a man from being flurried at his Presentation to the King. ”

“ Literature never wholly absorbed Chesterfield. Throughout the concluding half of his life his most serious interest was the education and the advancement in life of his natural son Philip. When the boy was barely five (in 1737) Chesterfield opened a correspondence with him, which he continued with scrupulous regularity so long as his son lived. At first he sent him elaborate essays, often both in French and English, on classical history, mythology, and composition. He never, when in office, allowed the business of state to delay the almost daily task. ”

“ Although Philip developed into a good-natured and sensible man, he was by nature incapable of assimilating any graces of manner. But Chesterfield's genuine affection rendered him tolerant of all defects. From August to November 1751 the young man stayed with his father, who expressed satisfaction with the extent of his knowledge and goodness of his heart. He believed that a further sojourn in Paris was all that was needed to give his deportment the polish it lacked. ”